Richie Armstrong moves with his mother from Salina, Kansas, to Lawrence at the start of his senior year of high school.  An exceptional shooting guard, he is briefly chronicled by Sean Grogan, the sports editor of the Lawrence Journal World, while at Free State High and then extensively during his freshman year on KU’s basketball team. 

 

Farieh Bukhari, a brilliant and beautiful student who comes to Kansas from Tehran, tests out of her mathematics major as a first-semester freshman and encounters Richie at WheatFields, the artisan bakery where she works. 

 

Later that semester, Farieh testifies in the academic hearing where a super-star philosophy professor—defended by his friend on the law school faculty, Andrew Stevenson—answers charges he is a racist who lost control of his classroom when confronted by one of his students, a confrontation set up by his jealous department head. 

 

Richie becomes infatuated with Farieh on meeting her at Thanksgiving, Farieh’s feelings for Richie grow during their spring semester, and the novel closes as the two of them struggle to say “Goodbye” for the summer.